Apparently, Apple really dropped the ball with respect to citations and bibliographies in the new Pages. It worked fine in Pages 2009 from what I have heard but now there are quite a few academics and researchers who are going back to Word for just those two features. Fortunately, my college paper writing days are long past. I still publish a lot of works but only in inDesign after the heavy lifting has been done by the doctors and engineers.
In the old days (me) you had to spent a hell of lot of time writing citations and bibliographies for term papers using typewriters, in the computer age any text editor, word processor, will do the job quite easy.
Numbers is completely inadequate as spreadsheet. It's not even in the same league as Excel.
Uh no!, What an inadequate comment. In many aspects Excel is inferior to Numbers. In some aspects it's the just the other way around. In my case, I use them both. Depending my needs, I use one or the other. They are more complementary than most people assume.
Currently Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Office (which is highly dependent on a Mouse/Keyboard form of input) onto the "Touch" metaphor, and I'm not impressed with how messy they are doing that. Word was patched onto over and over for over 10 years, and now MS is patching a new interface on top of that pile of spaghetti code.
Apple, on the other hand, is adding back features as they can figure out how to add them most correctly for the "touch" interface. I'm not impressed with how leisurely they are going about doing that, although I see that route yielding the best results in the end for an easy app to learn and use.
You do realise that Microsoft designed Office for iPad from scratch, don't you? Microsoft hasn't shoehorned existing desktop Office at all. Office for iPad has been designed for touch from the outset. That's why it gets excellent reviews.
I'm an Office 365 business subscriber, but I deleted these useless apps after trying them out because they are tied to using OneDrive. And OneDrive Business doesn't play well with other things I use (like OSX and iOS Apps) so I use Dropbox. Which Office for iPad doesn't support. At all.
People, please. Stop making up numbers. Its not 1 in 10. More like 1 in 10000.
But without official numbers, its all meaningless. And the only reason to not boast the new subscription numbers, is because they suck. If they told you those numbers instead, this launch would look like an utter failure.
Instead they tell you how many Free downloads of a non functional app took place. Whoopty Doo.
Numbers is completely inadequate as spreadsheet. It's not even in the same league as Excel.
I agree with you to a point. There are a small number of power users that actually use Excel and its great features. 98% of users Numbers is overkill for their skill set. I see it all the time in the corporate world where people use 1% of what Excel can do.
I already have an Office 365 subscription so when I downloaded it to both of my iPads (mine and my wife's) it was ready to go. The licensing allows me to have it on five desktop PC's PLUS five mobile devices. I suspect that there are many others like me as well as corporations that have licensing as well. Apple really isn't concerned about making money on the licensing and Microsoft has figured out that they aren't going to lose that much money through Apple based licensing. I suspect that this was a huge hurdle in the negotiations between the two companies and kept the apps from the AppStore for way too long.
These are well designed, feature-rich apps. They have gone through a mature development cycle so Microsoft has been working on them for a long time. Although I personally think Microsoft made a mistake in holding Office for iPad back, probably through Ballmer's arrogance, the result is a great set of apps.
My biggest complaint is that you are required to use Microsoft's OneDrive for cloud storage and aren't able to print to a Wi-Fi printer from the apps on the iPad.
Love 'em or Hate 'em, these apps rule in business.
I thought I read somewhere the subscription price dropped twenty or thirty bucks a year from the above quote price.
Anyway, the ever-buggy "Word" apps leads the pack in downloads. Apple's Pages only needs about 20% more features than it has now to satisfy most of the users who are stuck on Word for College student paper needs, however, there will always be a place for some features Word offers.
Excel has it's place in some businesses too, where its features have unique applications. It may be harder for Apple to dislodge Excel in those places, but for a good swath of users, Numbers will get the job done.
Like many a power users I'm not interested in learning a new program when I don't need to do so, but if one is going to move to a touch interface, with a program really designed for that kind of interface, then Apple's iWork is best, albeit less full-featured.
Currently Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Office (which is highly dependent on a Mouse/Keyboard form of input) onto the "Touch" metaphor, and I'm not impressed with how messy they are doing that. Word was patched onto over and over for over 10 years, and now MS is patching a new interface on top of that pile of spaghetti code.
Apple, on the other hand, is adding back features as they can figure out how to add them most correctly for the "touch" interface. I'm not impressed with how leisurely they are going about doing that, although I see that route yielding the best results in the end for an easy app to learn and use.
Microsoft wrote the iPad Office apps from scratch with the touch interface in mind. These apps are designed to be more touch-centric and not rely on a mouse or external keyboard. The code for Office on iOS is completely rewritten since it's on a different operating system (iOS vs. Windows) a different processor (custom ARM vs. Intel) and a different developer environment. One of the complaints from the Windows community is that the touch enabled version of Office became available for the iPad before Windows. In my opinion this is probably due to (a) the ability to start fresh with new code (b) not be bogged down by the overhead of the Windows system (c) the efficiency of iOS and the tools that Apple provides.
I have been using the iPad Office products since they were released. I am amazed how well they are suited for the touch environment and how efficient they are. There's no sign of "spaghetti code".
Apple dropped the ball with a lot of features, and has been bringing several back with each new release. I've been waiting for ages for them to restore linked text boxes. I think the challenge they are having is the web version of the app. Since they want feature parity across all platforms, then none of them get a feature that not all can support. I'm not sure how they would support flowing text across multiple boxes in a web app, that would be quite a trick!
Maybe not so difficult. There is a div property called overflow. You would need to use that to figure out how much of a text block needs to move to another div. That is just sudo-code but I can definitely see it working out. I have been using Google Mail and I am totally amazed what they have accomplished with Javascript.
In the old days (me) you had to spent a hell of lot of time writing citations and bibliographies for term papers using typewriters, in the computer age any text editor, word processor, will do the job quite easy.
Sure you can write anything you want in Pages but before you could manage your citations as they were linked and automatically updated. I never used that feature but that is my partial understanding of the current issue. You can no longer manage the citations in the way you could before.
Microsoft wrote the iPad Office apps from scratch with the touch interface in mind. These apps are designed to be more touch-centric and not rely on a mouse or external keyboard. The code for Office on iOS is completely rewritten since it's on a different operating system (iOS vs. Windows) a different processor (custom ARM vs. Intel) and a different developer environment. One of the complaints from the Windows community is that the touch enabled version of Office became available for the iPad before Windows. In my opinion this is probably due to (a) the ability to start fresh with new code (b) not be bogged down by the overhead of the Windows system (c) the efficiency of iOS and the tools that Apple provides.
I have been using the iPad Office products since they were released. I am amazed how well they are suited for the touch environment and how efficient they are. There's no sign of "spaghetti code".
Well then, let me apologize for speaking so critically of the dev group at MS for their hard work. Earlier I saw Office Excel running on the Surface RT and was shocked at what a kluge-job it was. Not touch friendly except in the most liberal sense of the word. I assume you are running the apps fully enabled so you can create and modify Word & Excel documents... if so, how intuitive did you find the programs to be? Did they follow Apple's design guidelines and act like other touch apps?
You didn't read my reply very carefully. It referred to the iPad version of Office not the RT version. The RT version is a direct port of the Windows version laid on top of a kludged version of Windows. It has no touch modifications and actually runs in desktop mode. There is no comparison. The Windows community is unhappy that MS doesn't have the touch version ready yet.
You didn't read my reply very carefully. It referred to the iPad version of Office not the RT version. The RT version is a direct port of the Windows version laid on top of a kludged version of Windows. It has no touch modifications and actually runs in desktop mode. There is no comparison. The Windows community is unhappy that MS doesn't have the touch version ready yet.
Including the desktop on Windows RT was a very stupid decision on Microsoft's part.
Including the desktop on Windows RT was a very stupid decision on Microsoft's part.
I completely agree. Unfortunately MS had to include it because their developers were unable to take care of some basic Windows tasks like control panel, explorer, and notepad. It also needs to be there to support legacy apps that don't run on the modern interface. I have no clue for the reason why MS hasn't updated their own utilities. It could be (a) they ran out of time. In which case they should have been able to catch up by now. (b) There's a technical issue related to the use of legacy Windows code. (c) Market testing shows low level of user acceptance (d) They screwed up with the RT product and it's going to disappear in the very near future and development has been stopped.
My money is on D. I think I read that Microsoft is the only one still making hardware for RT. All the other OEM's have dropped out because it's a bad product, MS was charging too much for licensing, and nobody is buying it because it's not "real" Windows. MS should have branded it with another name because of the confusion in the mind of the consumer. Oh, and it's overpriced.
I think Microsoft, in its stupid internal wars, just did not do things fast enough. I doubt RT will disappear, as it now also powers Windows Phone, which, while not really that popular, isn't in danger of disappearing.
I guess RT will live on with Microsoft's own hardware, and if Microsoft keeps playing its cards right, and hurries up with updating its core apps to take advantage of the RT platform, perhaps they could achieve something.
But I think this was their wakeup call, they can see clearly that Office alone can't sell now.
It%u2019s not a big surprise that Office for ipad reached 27M downloads in so little time. They did big promotion for the release and made it free, therefore everybody from the heavy office user to the average curious consumer wanted to see by himself why the apps were all about. But I think it was a disappointment for a LOT of them (me include). The free version is just a basic viewer%u2026 It%u2019s not even a preview of the app, it%u2019s like an image, and advertising you can download for their overpriced app, I found this%u2026disgusting in some way%u2026 Even if I can afford the overpriced subscription, I%u2019m definitely not taking it. Very good alternatives came on while Microsoft was searching for the evilest business model possible. I%u2019m using QuickEdit (https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/citrix-sharefile-quickedit/id364361728?mt=8 ), which is sufficient for me (and for most of the people for sure) in addition to Beesy (http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-taking-note-ipad/ ), an all-in-one productivity app way more complete than OneNote with a unique concept based on a smart note-taking feature. With this two apps, my ipad became my most valuable tool for work, and the price for both (free and 6$) have nothing to do with Microsoft%u2019s luxury%u2026
Comments
Apparently, Apple really dropped the ball with respect to citations and bibliographies in the new Pages. It worked fine in Pages 2009 from what I have heard but now there are quite a few academics and researchers who are going back to Word for just those two features. Fortunately, my college paper writing days are long past. I still publish a lot of works but only in inDesign after the heavy lifting has been done by the doctors and engineers.
In the old days (me) you had to spent a hell of lot of time writing citations and bibliographies for term papers using typewriters, in the computer age any text editor, word processor, will do the job quite easy.
Currently Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Office (which is highly dependent on a Mouse/Keyboard form of input) onto the "Touch" metaphor, and I'm not impressed with how messy they are doing that. Word was patched onto over and over for over 10 years, and now MS is patching a new interface on top of that pile of spaghetti code.
Apple, on the other hand, is adding back features as they can figure out how to add them most correctly for the "touch" interface. I'm not impressed with how leisurely they are going about doing that, although I see that route yielding the best results in the end for an easy app to learn and use.
You do realise that Microsoft designed Office for iPad from scratch, don't you? Microsoft hasn't shoehorned existing desktop Office at all. Office for iPad has been designed for touch from the outset. That's why it gets excellent reviews.
What a way to completely cock up a good idea.
People, please. Stop making up numbers. Its not 1 in 10. More like 1 in 10000.
But without official numbers, its all meaningless. And the only reason to not boast the new subscription numbers, is because they suck. If they told you those numbers instead, this launch would look like an utter failure.
Instead they tell you how many Free downloads of a non functional app took place. Whoopty Doo.
Uh, no.
Numbers is completely inadequate as spreadsheet. It's not even in the same league as Excel.
I agree with you to a point. There are a small number of power users that actually use Excel and its great features. 98% of users Numbers is overkill for their skill set. I see it all the time in the corporate world where people use 1% of what Excel can do.
These are well designed, feature-rich apps. They have gone through a mature development cycle so Microsoft has been working on them for a long time. Although I personally think Microsoft made a mistake in holding Office for iPad back, probably through Ballmer's arrogance, the result is a great set of apps.
My biggest complaint is that you are required to use Microsoft's OneDrive for cloud storage and aren't able to print to a Wi-Fi printer from the apps on the iPad.
Love 'em or Hate 'em, these apps rule in business.
I thought I read somewhere the subscription price dropped twenty or thirty bucks a year from the above quote price.
Anyway, the ever-buggy "Word" apps leads the pack in downloads. Apple's Pages only needs about 20% more features than it has now to satisfy most of the users who are stuck on Word for College student paper needs, however, there will always be a place for some features Word offers.
Excel has it's place in some businesses too, where its features have unique applications. It may be harder for Apple to dislodge Excel in those places, but for a good swath of users, Numbers will get the job done.
Like many a power users I'm not interested in learning a new program when I don't need to do so, but if one is going to move to a touch interface, with a program really designed for that kind of interface, then Apple's iWork is best, albeit less full-featured.
Currently Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Office (which is highly dependent on a Mouse/Keyboard form of input) onto the "Touch" metaphor, and I'm not impressed with how messy they are doing that. Word was patched onto over and over for over 10 years, and now MS is patching a new interface on top of that pile of spaghetti code.
Apple, on the other hand, is adding back features as they can figure out how to add them most correctly for the "touch" interface. I'm not impressed with how leisurely they are going about doing that, although I see that route yielding the best results in the end for an easy app to learn and use.
Microsoft wrote the iPad Office apps from scratch with the touch interface in mind. These apps are designed to be more touch-centric and not rely on a mouse or external keyboard. The code for Office on iOS is completely rewritten since it's on a different operating system (iOS vs. Windows) a different processor (custom ARM vs. Intel) and a different developer environment. One of the complaints from the Windows community is that the touch enabled version of Office became available for the iPad before Windows. In my opinion this is probably due to (a) the ability to start fresh with new code (b) not be bogged down by the overhead of the Windows system (c) the efficiency of iOS and the tools that Apple provides.
I have been using the iPad Office products since they were released. I am amazed how well they are suited for the touch environment and how efficient they are. There's no sign of "spaghetti code".
Maybe not so difficult. There is a div property called overflow. You would need to use that to figure out how much of a text block needs to move to another div. That is just sudo-code but I can definitely see it working out. I have been using Google Mail and I am totally amazed what they have accomplished with Javascript.
Sure you can write anything you want in Pages but before you could manage your citations as they were linked and automatically updated. I never used that feature but that is my partial understanding of the current issue. You can no longer manage the citations in the way you could before.
Exactly. Smoke and mirrors with out that information.
Microsoft wrote the iPad Office apps from scratch with the touch interface in mind. These apps are designed to be more touch-centric and not rely on a mouse or external keyboard. The code for Office on iOS is completely rewritten since it's on a different operating system (iOS vs. Windows) a different processor (custom ARM vs. Intel) and a different developer environment. One of the complaints from the Windows community is that the touch enabled version of Office became available for the iPad before Windows. In my opinion this is probably due to (a) the ability to start fresh with new code (b) not be bogged down by the overhead of the Windows system (c) the efficiency of iOS and the tools that Apple provides.
I have been using the iPad Office products since they were released. I am amazed how well they are suited for the touch environment and how efficient they are. There's no sign of "spaghetti code".
Well then, let me apologize for speaking so critically of the dev group at MS for their hard work. Earlier I saw Office Excel running on the Surface RT and was shocked at what a kluge-job it was. Not touch friendly except in the most liberal sense of the word. I assume you are running the apps fully enabled so you can create and modify Word & Excel documents... if so, how intuitive did you find the programs to be? Did they follow Apple's design guidelines and act like other touch apps?
Will Microsoft have to add a rap spellchecker as part of its agreement with Apple?
No, you will need to write one for your own use.
You didn't read my reply very carefully. It referred to the iPad version of Office not the RT version. The RT version is a direct port of the Windows version laid on top of a kludged version of Windows. It has no touch modifications and actually runs in desktop mode. There is no comparison. The Windows community is unhappy that MS doesn't have the touch version ready yet.
Including the desktop on Windows RT was a very stupid decision on Microsoft's part.
Including the desktop on Windows RT was a very stupid decision on Microsoft's part.
I completely agree. Unfortunately MS had to include it because their developers were unable to take care of some basic Windows tasks like control panel, explorer, and notepad. It also needs to be there to support legacy apps that don't run on the modern interface. I have no clue for the reason why MS hasn't updated their own utilities. It could be (a) they ran out of time. In which case they should have been able to catch up by now. (b) There's a technical issue related to the use of legacy Windows code. (c) Market testing shows low level of user acceptance (d) They screwed up with the RT product and it's going to disappear in the very near future and development has been stopped.
My money is on D. I think I read that Microsoft is the only one still making hardware for RT. All the other OEM's have dropped out because it's a bad product, MS was charging too much for licensing, and nobody is buying it because it's not "real" Windows. MS should have branded it with another name because of the confusion in the mind of the consumer. Oh, and it's overpriced.
I think Microsoft, in its stupid internal wars, just did not do things fast enough. I doubt RT will disappear, as it now also powers Windows Phone, which, while not really that popular, isn't in danger of disappearing.
I guess RT will live on with Microsoft's own hardware, and if Microsoft keeps playing its cards right, and hurries up with updating its core apps to take advantage of the RT platform, perhaps they could achieve something.
But I think this was their wakeup call, they can see clearly that Office alone can't sell now.
They did big promotion for the release and made it free, therefore everybody from the heavy office user to the average curious consumer wanted to see by himself why the apps were all about. But I think it was a disappointment for a LOT of them (me include). The free version is just a basic viewer%u2026 It%u2019s not even a preview of the app, it%u2019s like an image, and advertising you can download for their overpriced app, I found this%u2026disgusting in some way%u2026
Even if I can afford the overpriced subscription, I%u2019m definitely not taking it. Very good alternatives came on while Microsoft was searching for the evilest business model possible. I%u2019m using QuickEdit (https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/citrix-sharefile-quickedit/id364361728?mt=8 ), which is sufficient for me (and for most of the people for sure) in addition to Beesy (http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-taking-note-ipad/ ), an all-in-one productivity app way more complete than OneNote with a unique concept based on a smart note-taking feature. With this two apps, my ipad became my most valuable tool for work, and the price for both (free and 6$) have nothing to do with Microsoft%u2019s luxury%u2026